R.I.P. Kevin McCarthy

TheLos Angeles Times has the news that actor Kevin McCarthy has died at the age of 96. McCarthy enjoyed a long, successful career in films, on television, and on stage beginning with his Broadway debut in the 1930s and continuing up to this year. (His most recent credit on the IMDB is for a 2010 short film called "Drawback.") McCarthy worked with everyone from Robert Altman to Marilyn Monroe, and enjoyed late-career success via the touring one-man-show Give 'Em Hell, Harry, in which he played Harry Truman. He was a fine, versatile actor who will, inevitably, be remembered most widely for a single role: Dr. Miles J. Bennell, the hero of Don Siegel's 1956 science fiction classic Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Only a skilled actor could have pulled off that part, which takes a bland exemplar of a 1950s B-movie heroism over the edge of despair until... well, let's not spoil it. Anyone's who's seen the film knows the moment. And anyone who hasn't, be sure to check it out soon.